Costume Makeup - The Base Coat

Transcripts

Roger Bennett Riggle: Hello! I am Roger Bennett Riggle. I am a professional, licensed, make-up artist, and our model with us again today, is Vanessa Strickland. We were talking about make-up techniques for Halloween and specifically, we are working on applying prosthetics, and in this case, this prosthetic is a Werewolf nose, and we have already gotten the nose into place, and adhered it with the spirit gum, and we've gone over the edges with the liquid latex.

Now, we've allowed the liquid latex to dry, and you can see that it's almost invisible, and very, very clear. Now, in the beginning one product I forgot to mention to you is called castor sealer. You can buy castor sealer from a theatrical make-up supplier, or you can simply go the drugstore and get castor oil, okay, basically, the same, exact product.

Now, the reason we use castor sealer on latex is because, a cream foundation on your natural skin, and on a latex piece will have a slight chemical reaction on the latex piece, and will create a different color foundation. So, in order to disguise your piece, and blend it in with the face, you want the face and the prosthetic to be the same exact color. So, you have to seal the latex that you have used. So, simply, I am just going to pour out really, probably, just a couple of drops of the castor sealer, and I can use the clean edge of my non-latex sponge, we have used this for the liquid latex, I can just use the other corner with the castor sealer. I am going to dip it into the castor sealer and very simply, I am just going to pat it over the liquid latex that I applied, in order to seal the latex from the cream foundation. So, just to touch more, you dont need a lot. All you need is a light coat.

Now, this never really dries, it's oily. So, on the side, I make sure I have a tissue, or especially a cotton ball, and I will go along and dab up the excess of the castor oil. Now, because I am putting it on the cream bound foundation, and it's still oily, the cream foundation will blend into it perfectly fine because theyve both got an oil base to them. So, I am not mixing water and oil, in other words they are going to blend fine.

Now, I've pre-chosen a foundation color that I think looks reasonably well with the prosthetic, and this is a Ben Nye Foundation color, and basically I am going to take the non-latex sponge and the cream foundation and I am going to put it all over her face. I am going to do some interesting kind of design concepts. So, I want her eyebrows to look very menacing so, I might come up with the dark and a menacing kind of design up from the eyebrows. Dont need to look up to the ceiling, and then I am going to paint this foundation all the way on to the prosthetic, and onto her skin.

I want the eyes to be very big and menacing, so I probably -- I am not going to do the eyes dark, I am going to do them light. They might kind of be bloody red and menacing, and their might be big, white shapes in there, in order to exaggerate the eyes, especially if it's at night and you are at a party, and it's Halloween, you want those eyes to shine, to really be big and menacing. So, the idea is to paint the skin color basically, the same color as the prosthetic piece. You can see now that you can really not detect where the edges of the prosthetic meet the skin.

We've done a really good job in adhering it to the face, and also blending it, blending the edges with the liquid latex. So, you want a good amount of make-up on here, so that you see no difference between the prosthetic piece and the face. Now, I am going to take another clean angle of my sponge, and I am going into a very light brown, and see if I can just add a little different color and a little kind of texture and hair-color in a triangular shape above the head, and I might do a little accent right over the eyes here, and I can take the dark brown side, and I can put a few little -- I can blend some dark brown into the light, so that I have kind of a furry thing going on with the texture, what I am doing. I might even take a little bit of light, and add it to the highlight, the upper crust of those wrinkles. I want to blend it directly back, across the prosthetic, and into the skin, so that that helps to disguise the line as well. Dont ever stuff the make-up with the prosthetic or stuff it with the skin. Let it flow across both and it helps to blend them in. Then we come across here, on this side, and across here. I am just doing general washes of color with this sponge, and you can see the flatness of the sponge, it's picking up the upper surfaces of the prosthetic piece, which is wonderful because light colors bring things out and dark colors sink things in. So, you always want to put a lighter color on the top portion, three-dimensional part of your piece. Let's add just a little bit of light down to here. Remember, I want to concentrate a little bit more on light colors than dark because, if we did her whole face in dark colors, it would kind of disappear and go away. So, I need a lot of contrast, I need a lot of three-dimensionality going on in the face, and it has to be done with a light and dark colors, usually more than two colors.

The last thing I am going to do is to take one more side of my sponge, and go into some light, and let's say we are looking at her from a distance, close.